Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Just Wait....

I'm nowhere near retiring, and each semester I wonder if students can get worse. And you know what? They can!

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From KPNX.com in Phoenix:

An Arizona mother said she hopes cruel birthday cupcakes given to her teenage daughter will become a “teachable moment” about the horrors of the Holocaust.Deborah Muller, of Paradise Valley, said her daughter’s 14th birthday party this month included cupcakes that guests were allowed to frost. Two girls, who Muller said are friends of her daughter, decorated cupcakes with chocolate swastikas, even though the birthday girl is Jewish, according to KPNX-TV. Muller said in a now-deleted Facebook post that the girls told her they did it to “be funny.” She said the teens all recently learned about the Holocaust in school, and were aware of the symbol’s meaning.

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I love the detail that the students had been learning about the Holocaust, and my only response is: "Not much."

In the past, stupid pranks like this were only known to the people involved. Now, thanks to the glories of the internet/social media/and 24-hour news cycle, we get to revel in it, too. Nothing to see here. Move along, folks.

I don't agree that there is nothing to "see" here. It is indicative of a larger problem, whereby people 1) seem to think that they must share their every thought with social media, 2) act before they think, and 3) it is indicative of attitudes that are unacceptable but deemed somewhat more acceptable due to current press and politics. There is no excuse for this - it is offensive, and anyone should know this. Even a teen.

I agree; this is awful. But we're talking about 14-year-old girls. There's no one meaner than a 14-year old girl (okay, some 14-year-old girls), unless perhaps it's a 12- or 13-year-old girl. And girls tend to be mean in social/psychological rather than physical ways (though there are exceptions; see Patty's story about punching a friend above). And they're (appropriately) rebelling against adult authority at that age, and they tend to use the information available to them to accomplish that goal (so, lesson in the horrors of the holocaust = information about what adults (appropriately) hold sacrosanct, and hence what will shock them most -- and, for all that young adolescents like to pretend they don't care what the adults in their lives think, they're very aware of, and playing to, an adult audience).

As long as all the adults handled the situation well -- in other words, made sure the offenders understood why their offense was an offense, and insisted on apologies, and perhaps imposed other consequences -- I think there's some hope that these girls might turn into something resembling decent human beings by the time they hit college. It's not all the same thing, but the niece who told me at about the same age that she was "sick of hearing about Anne Frank" is now a pretty decent college-age adult with a serious interest in social justice. Some people do come with a well-developed sense of empathy built in, and never lose it even in the throes of puberty, but that's not true of everyone (and sometimes the empathy goes to far; especially empathic young people seem more likely to end up entangled, romantically or otherwise, with users, abusers, and other sorts of losers).

Mind you, if this happened in a sorority or fraternity, I'd expecting the local chapter to expel or at least suspend the members who committed the offense, and if the whole chapter were inclined to such behavior, I'd expect the national organization to shut it down. Young people can and should do a lot of maturing between 14 and 18, and if they don't complete the job quite on schedule, the consequences should still be commensurate with their age and presumed maturity.

What Was This?

College Misery was a dysfunctional group blog where professors got the chance to release some of the frustration that built up while tending to student snowflakes, helicopter parents, money mad Deans, envious colleagues, and churlish chairpeople.

Our parent site, Rate Your Students, started in 2005, and we continued that mission beginning in 2010. Ben at Academic Water Torture and Kimmie at The Apoplectic Mizery Maker both ran support blogs during periods when this blog had died.